It is the end of November, and I have just written the end of my first full-length novel. I wrote it this month as part of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I like this kind of gimmick that gets people to focus on a particular area of action, and I took on the NaNoWriMo goal of writing 50,000 words of new fiction during the 30 days of November. Having completed that goal, in the form of a novel, I feel like I am now an official novelist.
Writing a novel has prompted me to see people in a new light. Characters are key in a novel, more so than in any other form of fiction. In a novel it is important to have characters who are colorful and conspicuously different from each other. That is important in real life in a similar way. After guiding my characters through a long, involved story, I have a heightened appreciation for everything that makes people different from each other. Even people’s bad qualities are good in this sense. In economic terms we know that we will get more done if we all take on different points of view. Real life and the story lines of novels are very similar in this sense.
